Stephanie McMahon: We Try To Have A Basic Plan A Year Out
Stephanie McMahon talks planning in WWE.
Wrestling fans have heard the saying “plans change” just about every week in regards to WWE. The company might be heading in one direction and then, without much warning or reason, “plans change.” But, according to Stephanie McMahon, WWE does have a basic plan at all times.
“We try to have a basic plan a year out,” Stephanie told Sports Business Journal. “Inevitably things happen and storylines change. Another beautiful thing about WWE is because we are live 52-weeks a year, we have no offseason, we have no re-runs, and we essentially have a live focus group every single night at these live events telling us what’s working, what’s not working, and what they don’t care about. So we can shift and adjust our plans as needed.”
At this point, Triple H jumped in and discussed why plans can change.
“And you’re dealing with athletes, and you’re dealing with injuries, and the ability to shift and pivot at a moments notice to where you want to go,” said Triple H. “Beauty comes out of chaos a lot, and sometimes you get in a situation where the worst possible things happen — leading into a big event and somebody gets hurt — it leads you to come up with something even better.”
A recent example of WWE changing directions due to injury is the Tommaso Ciampa injury in NXT. Ciampa was originally scheduled to face Johnny Gargano at NXT TakeOver: New York last Friday. However, his injury forced him out of the contest. He was replaced by Adam Cole, which Triple H believed was just as big as Gargano vs. Ciampa.
